The New Era Continues

Chris did such a bang-up job with Jump Cuts last time that we figured we’d just make him the semi-permanent lightning round czar. It’s not the title he wanted, but as we kept trying to tell him, there can be only one Highlander.

Anyway, the Screeners were terrified to learn of a Star-Trek-Director-Bring-Franchise-70710.html">change in direction for the next Star Trek movie...or at least, the two Screeners who care were. The other half of them were mildly bemused, and we all know there’s nothing more entertaining in a Jump Cut than mild bemusement.

Next up, the Screeners delve into a bit of personal preference with a discussion of what they’d like to see more of in the movies. Josh is left temporarily speechless when he’s told that asking for “more less” doesn’t make sense.

And because one human interest piece just isn’t enough for one episode, the four then spend some time talking about a villain (from the medium of their choice) whom they find memorable or especially effective. Turns out that Chris’s secret fear is mixing media and exercise. Wii Sports must haunt his dreams.

And then there was some kind of news roundup. We don’t know what it was about; we dozed off after Chad picked a villain from every medium.

Clearly Gone

Despite Melody’s best efforts at discretion, the Screeners watched and have sat down to discuss Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, the new Alex Gibney documentary distributed by HBO.

As we all know, Scientology is a famously litigious organization, so we’ll keep commentary and spoilers light and leave the bulk of the allegations about what Scientology “is” up to Gibney. We just think it’s great that the conversation has been started and that HBO’s willing to air it.

The Little Game that Couldn’t

So here’s how this episode’s Cutting Room Floor went down: Josh likes an NPR podcast called “Ask Me Another”. One day, Josh heard them play a movie-related game on the podcast and thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” He then thought, “Hey, they borrow game formats from Jeopardy; why can’t I borrow one from them? I could write puns like that!”

Then he wrote some of those puns, and he made the other three Screeners listen to them and try to guess what he was talking about. It was an abject failure, and everyone hates him, but we’re airing it because it’s the only third segment we have. Deal with it.

Whew, OK; it’s over. That last segment made the show seem even longer than normal, right? Yeah, we know. Head over to Facebook to leave your hate mail.